


A Brother's Keeper

by Ljósfari (Ljosfari)



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ljosfari/pseuds/Lj%C3%B3sfari
Summary: She holds his head in her hands, and his blood is still fresh — it sticks to her palms, seeps under her nails.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	A Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this fanart](https://twitter.com/AnaKalashnikova/status/1303108192273137666?s=19), itself based on [this tweet](https://twitter.com/mallozee/status/1300857235224973312) by a Bungie narrative lead. 
> 
> Rated M for descriptions of blood and gunshot wounds.

She had time to process it. She had seen it happen from her vantage point at the edge of the cosmos. But it did not feel real until she held her brother's lifeless body in her arms.

The Techeuns had discouraged her from seeing the body, and for good reason. Her brother was unrecognizable, his handsome face now a unsightly thing, his regal brow sunken into a grisly, bloody hole.

What an undignified end for Uldren. "You brave, devoted, pathetic fool," she wails, yet no tears come from her eyes — she has to teach herself again how to cry. She holds his head in her hands, and his blood is still fresh — it sticks to her palms, seeps under her nails.

He really did all that for her. He turned against his own people for her, he razed the Reef for her, he freed Riven for her. Or rather, for the idea he had of Mara, warped and twisted by Riven's sharp tongue.

But where would he get that idea of his own sister, if not straight from her? He divined her movements in the distance, and projected his own thoughts on them.

_No, not his own thoughts, not since he came back from the Black Garden._

(Or did the Heart only lay bare what was already in Uldren's own?)

Either way, this was what Uldren saw in her: an ice-cold tyrant who he would follow to the bitter end. Maybe if he knew about the plan, if he knew what was going to happen, he could have awaited her return and not be consumed like this by Riven's whispers... But that could not change that Mara herself had _made_ him see her like this. Hers was the path that Uldren followed, even if it was never her intention to turn him into this murderer, this twisted reflection of himself, this carcass, this shell of a man that lays heavy in her arms.

She cannot bear to look at him anymore.

Mara leaves her brother's body where it lays, squeezes his cold hand one last time, and washes her own in the artificial sea of the Divalia Fossa.


End file.
